Story: Original Souls

Author: katydid001

Chapter 7 Beta'ed by: CherryBerry12

Rated: M; violence, swearing, sex

Warning: Mentions of PTSD during the course of this chapter

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor do I speak Japanese fluently.


Chapter 7: PTSD and Genjutsu

April, Konoha

It had been two months since Katya had started teaching again and five months since she had landed in this alternate universe. Time seemed irrelevant as she buried herself in a routine. Wake up, workout, bathe, work, come home and repeat. The monotony kept her sane for some time, but over the last month it seemed that her analytical mind was focused on solving the mystery of her being there. She didn't want to focus on it; instead, she focused on spending time with her spouse, new friends and work. But through the din of monotonous routine questions sprung up from the recesses of her mind.

'Will we ever get back?'

'Do we even want to?'

'What happened on the last patrol?'

'Is Kyle still alive? Do we even want to know?'

The 'I don't know's' became louder in her head and competed for attention against the latent post-traumatic stress from her last deployment. The Army shrinks handed out PTSD diagnoses like candy, trusting the veteran's affairs and civilian health care systems to pick up the broken pieces of a service member's mind. After all, what good would it do to take the time to make the correct diagnosis on an active service member who would be sent to the frontline regardless of what was actually wrong with them.

While Shisui was away on a mission she woke up with a suppressed scream from her nightmares. The week before she left on the fateful patrol that changed the trajectory of her life was terrible. The FOB had been the target of RPG attacks in the course of three days. On the fourth day the enemy had begun their assault. They had overrun the entire operation, forcing her to evacuate with her squad into a nearby village.

During the course of their retreat was the first time that she had killed someone...and the second. She hadn't even thought about it, had simply aimed and pulled the trigger as the insurgent aimed his own weapon at her team. The second time had been even easier. They had found a small cave to hole up in near the dusty village as they waited for reinforcements. After forty hours of running on adrenaline and terror she had finally succumbed to a light sleep. Her mind kept replaying the words of Scarlett O'Hara: 'I'll think about that tomorrow.'

Two hours later, she felt as though the air around her had been disturbed. Her gut instinct told her to move further into the cave system. Before she could issue the command to her four-man squad a man came up from behind Kyle and held him at gun-point. Yelling for them to get out of the cave or Kyle would die. Katya put down her weapons in that moment and told him that she would make the better hostage, that all he had to do was let Kyle go. The man hesitated for a moment before Katya had the chance to sink her Gerber into his neck, severing his carotid artery and trachea at the same time, disabling his scream.

They stored the man's body in the back of the cold cavern while they hid, waiting for reinforcements to arrive. Their only communication was their distress beacon with a GPS locator. The four of them sat quietly for a week with dying hope as they realized the blinking red light was growing dimmer with every passing hour. Katya refused to think about the three lives she had taken. 'I'll think about that tomorrow' had somehow become her new mantra.

Tomorrow had now arrived, and she could not stop thinking about it. The feel of the blood spurting from the arterial wound. The sound of her blade unfolding. If she looked hard enough she could almost see the splatters of blood on the blade that had traveled with her through dimensions. She could not stop hearing the gurgled noises as the unknown man drowned in his own blood or the smell that filled the cave with his decomposition. Katya had suspected that Shisui knew what she was thinking about, or at least had an idea. He was more gentle than ever with her. He didn't ask her to practice the self-defense moves they had been working on. He sharpened his kunai and tanto in his office rather than at home when he noticed the 'schink' sound of the blade was bothering her. He made noise when he was behind her to make his presence known. She knew that sooner rather than later he was going to ask what was on her mind, but she didn't want to think about that either. He had his own demons to deal with and didn't need her to add to them.

Katya woke up to another day groggy from the lack of sleep. She fumbled through her morning routine and vaguely understood that Yata would be staying in the summons' realm for the week. For the first time in two months she entered the academy without the grumpy crow. The entire day felt off, for reasons that she didn't quite understand. She was almost relieved when it was time for her office hours. Katya relished spending the time quietly in her office, grading papers. She barely registered the knock on the office door before Eiji Ueda walked in to discuss his failing grades in calculus, again. With an inward groan of exasperation she motioned him to enter the office.

This was the third time in the same week that he had tried to convince her to change his grade on the latest test. The first time he saw her he tried to charm her into changing the grade. The second time he tried to manipulate her by saying how disappointed his family would be if she didn't change the grade. To say the least, she was dreading whatever angle he would try this time. All he needed to do was actually study the material and he would do well. The problem was that he refused to try. He was adamantly against any sort of tutoring session. It appeared he even had problems with joining his peers' study group.

"Hello, Katya-sensei. I want to take a moment to discuss my grade."

"This is the third time this week that you have done so, Eiji-san. I have already thoroughly explained your options to you. You can attend tutoring, join a study group or retake this course; however, I will not assign you a grade that you have not earned." Katya fixed a thoroughly unimpressed glare at the chuunin as a red blush of anger crept it's way up the side of his neck.

"This is already the third damn time I've taken this course! You have to let me pass!" Eiji slammed his palm on her desk in emphasis. The whole scene reminded Katya of a toddler that she used to babysit for her grandmother's neighbors. The nineteen-year-old chuunin outwardly calmed himself down for a moment before painting a half smile on his face that no doubt had charmed others. He was about to speak again when Katya interrupted him:

"As I said, Eiji-san: I will not assign you a grade that you have not earned in this course. If you continue to force the issue I will drop you from this course and ban your return. Now, leave." Eiji gave her a cold stare as Katya returned his look with a blank one of her own.

The moment before he exited the doorway the entire room started to blur at the edges and her head began to pound with the worst migraine she had ever experienced. She walked to Iruka's office while leaning on the wall to stay upright. The hallway felt like it was rocking beneath her feet. Spots danced before her eyes before she collapsed in front of his open office door, just as he was walking out. Katya felt the trap master catching her before completely losing consciousness.


Shisui

Shisui walked into his apartment after a day of meeting with the upper echelons of Konoha's ANBU to determine changes in security protocols following Itachi's inauguration. He was surprised to see a toad casually sitting on his coffee table eating from his candy dish. Shisui felt his eyebrow tick with annoyance towards one unruly blond Uzumaki.

"Oh, you're home," the toad said slowly, its cheeks stuffed with hard candies.

"I am. May I ask why you're here?" he replied, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.

"Boss said to tell you your wife fainted. He and Iruka brought her home a couple of hours ago." The toad flicked out his tongue for another candy. "Oh, and he wanted to ask her to help him out with some of the fraction stuff when she gets better."

"Thanks. You can go now, you know."

"I know. You buy good candy. Ja ne!" The toad replied, dismissing itself with a puff of smoke. 'That's because I get it straight from the Land of Tea…' Shisui thought to himself as he walked to the bedroom, mourning the loss of his imported candies. He wasn't that alarmed by the fact that his wife fainted, as he suspected it was just the chakra sensitivity; especially if she was tutoring Naruto. The teenager had more chakra in his pinky finger than the majority of shinobi used in a lifetime.

Whimpering sounds came from behind the bed as his wife thrashed around in her sleep.

"Leave him alone!" Katya said in a breathless whisper as her legs kicked out, hiking up her work skirt to an indecent height.

"Ah, shit," Shisui said from the doorway, scrubbing his hand over his face. It wasn't the first time that he had seen Katya in the midst of a night terror. On the contrary, they had been steadily increasing since she arrived. He knew better than to try and startle her awake; he removed his weaponry and placed it into the chest at the end of the bed before crawling in beside his wife, pinning her arms and legs with his own as he steadily rocked her. Thirty minutes had passed before she finally went still and began to stir.

"Shisui?" Katya whispered groggily into the darkened room.

"Yeah, right here. I'm here for you, sweetheart," came the quiet reply from the warm arms holding her. "You know you need to talk about it. If you let it settle it will only fester."

"I know...not tonight though…"


Katya

The next day Katya felt as though she were walking in a fog. She started to see the men she had killed in the strangest of places: at the end of alleyways, sitting in the coffee shop, in the back of her classroom. At the end of the day the phantoms had started to talk to her. They crowded around her until she could scarcely move while she was working at the white dropped the marker she was holding and placed her hands over her ears.

"You could have taken us out another waay. We had families."

"I was blackmailed into it. How could you kill me?"

"I was only sixteen. You knew how to do a non-lethal take-down!" The third ghost screamed at her. Its face started to bleed from the bullet wound in its forehead.

"Stop...please...stop…" Katya whimpered as she started to move to the floor. The door to the room opened as she began to hyperventilate.

"Katya-san, are you okay?" Iruka asked slowly as he started to approach the young math professor. He placed his hand on her shoulder to get her attention. She grabbed his hand and twisted his arm behind his back, shoving him bodily into the whiteboard, her eyes seemingly glazed over. "Katya-san...I need you to relax. Okay, Katya-san. Katya-san, you are safe here, you can let go." Iruka kept repeating her name, recognizing a PTSD-induced panic attack.

With a shake of her head she came back to herself and looked at the position they were in with growing horror in her eyes. Katya released Iruka as though she had been burned. She backed up to the door in the same instant, shaking her hands in front of her and saying, "I'm sorry," over and over again as she ran out of the classroom.


Shisui

Shisui was in the Hokage's office working with Kakashi and Itachi about the new changes they wanted to implement for village security when Iruka, of all people, walked in looking concerned.

"Hokage-sama, I need to report that one of my civilian instructors has been placed under a genjutsu," the harried instructor stated. Itachi inclined his head for Iruka to continue his story. "The instructor was talking to herself with her hands over her ears and seemed to be in the midst of a panic attack when I walked in. The moment I put my hand on her shoulder, she attacked and pushed me against the blackboard."

"That sounds more like post-traumatic stress than genjutsu," Kakashi stated blandly from the corner. "You said it was a civilian instructor, though?"

"Yes, Katya Uchiha. The new math…" Iruka wasn't able to finish before Shisui had shunshined out of the office to find his wife. "Is he okay?"

"Apparently, his wife is not." Kakashi flipped another page of his book, taking advantage of the unexpected break in paperwork.

"Where did you say she went to, Iruka-san?" The new Hokage asked politely.

"I didn't, she just ran out of the classroom." Itachi nodded and left the office, intent on stopping his best friend from ripping apart the village to look for his missing soulmate. He tracked down Shisui's chakra signature to the far side of the village near the Nakano River.


Shisui activated his sharingan, watching his wife huddle against the base of a tree in the forest with her hands on her ears. Her chakra flow was irregular and indicated that she was clearly under the effects of a long-term genjutsu. Every time that he came close to her she startled and backed away as if she didn't recognize him.

"Hey Kat, I know that you're probably seeing and hearing some stuff right now, but I need you to listen to my voice and calm down. I need to touch you to get this to stop, okay?" Shisui moved slowly and placed his hands in front of him in a placating motion as he cursed inwardly at his wife's glassy eyes. Usually he wasn't one for vengeance but at the moment it was starting to sound like an excellent option. Whoever had put his wife under this hack of a genjutsu was going to regret it. Katya stayed still as he approached and ended the genjutsu.

The effect was immediate. The voices and phantoms that had multiplied since she ran out of the academy disappeared. She felt as though she could breathe again as the cloud of fear dissipated.

"Thank you," Katya whispered as she put her forehead on Shisui's chest. A few minutes passed as Shisui and Katya rocked together underneath the tree in the gathering dusk. She gave a small nod to indicate that she was ready to move before saying, "Mm. Your arms are comfortable…" She mumbled while drifting off to sleep, comfortable and content to lay underneath the forest canopy with her husband.

"Oi, you need to stay awake babe. You need your head examined to make sure nothing was permanently damaged." Katya made a small noise of assent before they stood up.

"I attacked Iruka...I need to go apologize. And I really really hate hospitals..."

"He's a nice guy; he'll understand. At the moment, it's more important to get you checked out by a medic." Shisui teleported them to the hospital before she could protest and stopped in front of a surprised Shizune. "Hey, Shizune. You don't mind taking a look at Katya, do you?"

"Uh, no, I guess not. I have five minutes." Shizune motioned for them to follow her as she walked into an empty examination room. "What's the problem?"

"I guess I was under a genjutsu and seeing dead people...well and hearing them…" Shisui gave Katya a significant look so that she would elaborate on that. "Oh, fine. And they multiplied exponentially throughout the day." He nodded, satisfied before adding his own opinion that, as a genjutsu expert, it was shoddy and incomplete work, also likely that it was meant to be long-term. Shizune began to run through the diagnostic jutsus and was taken aback at how Katya's chakra coils felt.

"Well, you're not wrong." Shizune sat back with a sigh. "Katya-san, you're chakra sensitive. When you were under the genjutsu it blew open your tenketsu, causing your once closed off chakra system to open. Because you're in your mid-twenties, this caused damage to the tenketsu that were forced open. You're very lucky to still be breathing, this kind of damage usually results in a fatality. I'd recommend not attempting to use any sort of chakra and to take it easy for the next couple of weeks, or you could cause further damage."

Shisui grimaced and rubbed his face with his hands roughly. Shizune continued, "Now we do this to academy students all the time if they're unable to mold chakra. But they're under the age of seven when their coils are developing. You, on the other hand, already had an overabundance of yin chakra for some reason or another and your coils are already developed. It is strange, though."

"What is?" Katya asked.

"Your chakra is somewhat similar to Tsunade-sama's. Almost as though you were a cousin. Are you sure you're not related to a Senju?"

"Shizune-san, you know that's impossible." Shizune hummed back noncommittally, indicating she was done with the exam.

"I would say don't mold chakra for the next day. But seeing as you've never purposely done so, I don't imagine that is a problem. Although, if you wanted you would be able to now."

Shisui flashed his sharingan to look at Katya's chakra which was moving sluggishly throughout her system, rather than at a standstill between the tenketsu. 'Well, there's something positive with someone's botched genjutsu.'

The next day Shisui walked up to the academy doors and took a calming breath before entering his wife's classroom. She had been very adamant about returning as soon as possible to prove a point. What that point may be, he still didn't know. Probably some kind of woman-power thing. One thing he knew about his Katya was that she refused to look or be weak in front of anybody. He and her cousin, Taylor, had been the only exceptions.

Katya looked startled when he knocked on the door and poked his head in the full room.

"Shisui?" She asked, confused.

"Aa. I'm sorry to interrupt. May I have a moment to speak to your class, please?" Shisui asked, now fully immersed in his chief of police persona. Katya gave him a slight nod but otherwise said nothing as Shisui moved to the front of the room and leaned back on the desk.

"Some of you may be aware that Katya Uchiha is a civilian academy instructor. As a civilian she is fully entitled to the laws that protect civilians from shinobi within our village. As an academy instructor she is further protected from students that wish to abuse their own power. Now with saying this, Katya Uchiha was attacked this last week by a genjutsu that myself and Hokage-sama believe was cast by someone in this class." Shisui pushed chakra into his eyes to activate his sharingan as some of the newer shinobi squirmed slightly. "Now, I feel it necessary as the chief of the Uchiha Military Police to remind you of the penalties for attacking a civilian instructor. It is a minimum of ten years in jail after awaiting the pleasure of T&I. However, if the perpetrator were to come forward now they may receive leniency." Shisui focused his gaze on a brown-haired chuunin that looked distinctly uncomfortable. The chuunin's chakra was agitated, which indicated to the veteran police chief that the chuunin was hiding something.

"No one wants to come forward, then? Wonderful. I don't mind interrogating everyone in this class," Shisui said lackadaisically, crossing his arms over his chest in an intimidating manner that he was sure would have made his late uncle Fugaku proud. "Can you wait in your office, tsuma-chan?" He asked Katya, who gave a slight nod and touched his arm briefly before walking out. The experienced shinobi in the room tensed at the implied threat. It was one thing for him to be present because a random civilian was attacked, but his own wife? There were less than four shinobi in the world that would be able to stop Shunshin no Shisui if he wanted to go on a homicidal rampage, after all. Two of those shinobi would feel less than compelled to do so, if they thought he was justified.

"Oh shit, someone really messed up," one of the genin in the middle of the class murmured to their neighbor.

"Who would be stupid enough to try casting a genjutsu on shunshin no Shisui's wife?" The other whispered back.


AN: Posted 1 April 2020

Tsuma-chan: an affectionate way of speaking to one's own wife.

FOB: Forward operating base

RPG: Rocket-propelled Grenade

Scarlett O'Hara: From Gone with the Wind

Gerber: Larger utility folding knife that's issued in the US Army.

A small blurb about PTSD (as always, disclaimer: not a physician; just a lowly physicist): PTSD is not exclusive to combat, many things can trigger it including but not limited to: sexual trauma, physical trauma, childbirth trauma, serious health issues, serious accidents, mass murder, torture etc… ( .uk/conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/causes/) If you suspect that you or a loved one has PTSD or some other mental illness contact your primary care physician, mental health professional, priest, experienced clergy member. If you or a loved one is having thoughts of suicide or hurting yourself contact a suicide hotline (listed below). The most important thing in times of mental health crises is to reach out and know that you're not alone. Ending things permanently does not and will never make things better.

US Suicide hotline: 1-800-273-8255

Canada Suicide hotline: 1-833-456-4566

UK Suicide hotline: Apparently is unavailable due to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Online chat: /chat/